Whither yon independence?

I read this article on Weblogg-ed about porting training content to cell-phones (nothing new) but it was written in a way that made me stop to think (definitely new 🙂 )…

My oldest son and I are currently going through the process of completing our state’s online Hunters Safety course (don’t get me started) with the intent of going out to do some, well, uh, hunting.  I have in my mind this idyllic vision of the two of us being alone, discussing life as can only be done in a gorgeous middle of nowhere place, Father and Son.  It’s just like a scene from a really good movie (no Lame Ending 😉 ) except for the background music.  In this vision, there is no music because we are experiencing being alive in it’s simplest form.  No soundtrack, no advertisements, no appointments, no ringing phones or to-do lists.  <sidebar>When you’re actually doing a to-do list, does it become a do-do list?</sidebar> 

I recognize that “nature” is not everyone’s cup o’ tea but I personally get a feeling of being alive and aware of myself when stripping away everything human-made (uh, except clothes.  Gotta’ keep the clothes.) that I just can’t get any other way.  The word that comes to mind is independence.   Just me (who am I?) alone with the world that God (who is that?) created.  Obviously, my personal value/moral/ethical/whatever system is at work here, but, as the world is [apparently] headed to ubiquitous computing I’m beginning to become a little paranoid.  I also wonder what we’re sacrificing as the connectedness of our lives increases.  When I read the Weblogg-ed article I saw a person in my mind wandering aimlessly without the slightest clue what to do when their devices ran out of power unexpectedly.

Now, I’m not going to buy 100 acres in North Dakota and go “off the grid” or anything but while I’m excited about how networked technology can enable Learning 2.0, I do think there is some real value in being un-networked too.  Plus it gets really, REALLY, cold in North Dakota.

How do you drive “connected learning” and “to survive in today’s economy you need to build knowledge/interpersonal networks” without loosing sight of the value of the indivuals that make up the network?  I guess it’s kind of like asking if the forest or the trees are more valuable…